Friday, June 25, 2010

I am anything but a prolific blogger, but I suspect some are wondering why I have not posted any new threads this month; for those who wonder, and for ‘the record’, the following elucidates a good deal of the reasons why…

The month of June is special to me: it is the month of my birth; it is the month of my wedding anniversary; and it is the month of my retirement. I was born in 1955, so this year I am 55 (kind of cool); this year also marks the 25th year of marriage to my dear and wonderful wife; and finally, it is the 10th anniversary of my retirement.

I have spent much of this month tending to many things not related at all to internet issues: apart from the above, June also brings many outside ‘chores’ that a beach house demands; I have also spent what little ‘free’ time I have had in prayer and reading, seeking God’s guidance as to what my next ecclesiastical affiliation should be; and finally, June is the month that I assess my physical workouts, and plot the next year goals.

This month I am in the middle of my weight-lifting cycle; Monday I bench-pressed 245 lbs. for 10 reps; yesterday I set a new personal record for my 14 mile bike ride, which is probably related to the increased time on the bike due to my plantar faciiitis (started in Feb. of this year, and is taking way too long to heal - IMHO). I am now running barefoot, which has limited my distance, but my foot is healing, and hope to be a bit more productive in the months to come…

As I related above, this month I turned 55…wow, when I was a teen, I thought 55 was OLD !!! But truth be known, I don’t feel that ‘old’; I weighed in today at 193lbs., a weight that I have been (between 191-195; 5’ 11.5”) for nearly 3 decades now. My strength is pretty much the same as it was in my ‘prime’; my speed has decreased a bit, but probably due mostly to my shift to cardio—apart from my eyes and a few gray hairs, I feel very good for 55!!!

Anyway, enough about me…next week I plan to get back into the cyber/internet world with a renewed and robust spirit!!!

Contributors

Total Pageviews

Getting History Right

The Reformers unequivocally rejected the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church. This left open the question of who should interpret Scripture. The Reformation was not a struggle for the right of private judgement. The Reformers feared private judgement almost as much as did the Catholics and were not slow to attack it in its Anabaptist manifestation. The Reformation principle was not private judgement but the perspicuity of the Scriptures. Scripture was ‘sui ipsius interpres’ and the simple principle of interpreting individual passages by the whole was to lead to unanimity in understanding. This came close to creating anew the infallible church…It was this belief in the clarity of Scripture that made the early disputes between Protestants so fierce. This theory seemed plausible while the majority of Protestants held to Lutheran or Calvinist orthodoxy but the seventeenth century saw the beginning of the erosion of these monopolies. But even in 1530 Casper Schwenckfeld could cynically note that ‘the Papists damn the Lutherans; the Lutherans damn the Zwinglians; the Zwinglians damn the Anabaptists and the Anabaptists damn all others.’ By the end of the seventeenth century many others saw that it was not possible on the basis of Scripture alone to build up a detailed orthodoxy commanding general assent. (A.N.S. Lane, “Scripture, Tradition and Church: An Historical Survey”, Vox Evangelica, Volume IX – 1975, pp. 44, 45 – bold emphasis mine.) [http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/vox/vol09/scripture_lane.pdf]

And this one thing at least is certain; whatever history teaches, whatever it omits, whatever it exaggerates or extenuates, whatever it says and unsays, at least the Christianity of history is not Protestantism. If ever there were a safe truth, it is this…To be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant. – John Henry Newman